Human Rights Training

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Human Rights Training

The Center provides training and legal information in order to expand the number of Indian leaders and community members who participate in international human rights procedures. We help indigenous leaders to promote and defend their human rights, to use human rights law to change domestic law and to use their political power to change the United States’ policies concerning international human rights law.

In 2009, we conducted three major training sessions and several smaller sessions to prepare Indian leaders to use human rights law. We also encouraged Indian leaders to participate in the United Nations and the Organization of American States human rights processes to defend their lands and other rights. We have had particular success working with and training Indian leaders from South and Central America. Several of those Indian leaders went on to testify at hearings before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and also participated in meetings with United States government officials to discuss how United States policies affect indigenous peoples in Central and South America.